Hello,
This post is to share notes on the MIDI Fighter Twister for use in Cubase. If you don’t already own a MIDI Fighter Twister, or don’t know what that is, I recommend looking into that, and a Stream Deck+ that has encoders and MIDI control, to work side-by-side with your MIDI Fighter Twister.
I encourage anybody who owns one to please share their notes - how they use it, scripts they’ve written, how they use it for which plugins and why, and share your workflows so that we can build new systems together.
The purpose of this thread is for multiple reasons:
- To share and understand how these powerful tools relate to Cubase
- To have a knowledge base for issues that pop up and how to fix them
- To consolidate info into a manageable place
- Video tutorials and scripting will be shared here over time
- AI training
- To link to other threads that talk about these topics in more depth
- To build new Cubase workflows, or to improve old ones.
SECTION 1: Laying the Groundwork
The following examples assume that the MIDI channel range is 1-16.
Sending MIDI from the MIDI Fighter Twister:
MIDI channel 1: controls the knob position value
MIDI channel 2: sets the button press value.
Both CC values are the same by default. Only the MIDI channel is different between encoder and button.
Receiving MIDI back to the MIDI Fighter Twister as feedback:
Channel 1 updates the knob position on the controller.
Channel 2 updates the button status, determined by the color of the LED when the encoder is pressed or not.
Ideally, the regular two values sent back are either 0 or 127, so that the default on/off colors get used for toggle switch buttons updating properly.
But, many times, the encoder receives back from Cubase (or elsewhere) a value in between 1 and 126 on channel 2, and when it does that, even though your dial value is correct, the color changes on you when you aren’t expecting it. The color of the LED will change to whatever that value represents on the color graph below:
So for example, if you are adjusting a plugin and changing the selected track and you end up with your colors off, it means that the plugin sent back data that wasn’t a 0 or 127 on channel 2. It was a number represented on the color spectrum above.
(Knowing this means that it can be accounted for in the scripts at a later time).
Channel 3 does the blinking, pulsing, and strobing of each encoder
RGB Strobe | Value 1 - 8
RGB Pulse | Value 9 - 16
RGB Brightness 17-47 (48 not listed in manual and appears to be same brightness as 47)
Indicator Strobe | Value 49 - 56
Indicator Pulse | Value 57 - 64
Indicator Brightness 65 - 95
RGB Rainbow | Value 127
While I’ve owned a MFT for a couple years now, I’ve never thoroughly tapped into these LED features, but I’d like to start using them more often, such as blinking LEDs to indicate that the track is in record mode. Little things like that.
Those are my beginner notes. Please expand this over time. Everybody welcome.